Guide: Measure organic influencer ROI and identify key ambassadors in your community

With a game released every 44th minute on Steam alone during 2021, competition in the gaming industry is fierce. This has increased the importance of securing traction during and after launch, and gaming marketers have to step up their game to get their titles noticed. While influencer marketing is widely recognized as the go-to marketing channel for promoting games, marketers still scratch their heads over one thing - measuring return on investment or ROI.

In fact, 33% of marketers aren’t even measuring it. As with any marketing strategy, a lack of access to the appropriate data makes it incredibly difficult for marketers to make informed decisions about improving their strategy.

This guide will show you how to measure the ROI of your influencer marketing activities and how you can set up a scalable workflow for turning your community into a goldmine.

A data-driven approach to save time and increase results

When it comes to showcasing the potential of influencer marketing, few things are as powerful as organic content. Whether through streams or videos, an influencer enjoying the game that they are creating content about will find more success and attract an audience that shares the same interest. For a gaming marketer, having a solid organic influencer presence is one of the best ways of scaling awareness and sales for their titles.

Manual prospecting on content platforms used to be the go-to way to identify influencers creating content about your games. However, with over 9 million channels going live every month on Twitch alone, it has become impossible for marketers to keep up. In addition, the lack of scalability in the manual workflow has led to many publishers and studios cutting corners and prioritizing the latest projects. Unfortunately, this leads to missed opportunities in the form of not identifying and engaging with influencers that pick up and enjoy a title in your portfolio.

Marketers looking to scale this cost- and time-efficient channel need to work with data and set up a funnel that creates value for both their community, social media, influencer, PR, and marketing team.

With Lurkit’s insights tool, you can set up automated influencer monitoring for all your titles and create a time-efficient workflow that guarantees that you never miss the chance to build relationships with influencers that love to create content about your games.

The metrics you should be keeping an eye on

When it comes to measuring the performance of your organic influencer marketing, there are a few key metrics you should be keeping in mind:

Hours watched (best performers)

King of the hill, when it comes to measuring the exposure of your games, hours watched will let you know which influencers have generated the most eyeballs on your title.

Airtime (most loyal influencers)

Airtime will showcase the hardest grinders in your community. Often overlooked, monitoring airtime lets you identify the most dedicated influencers that created the most content about your title. These creators will often be very excited to engage with your brand and make for great ambassadors.

Average and peak viewership (avg. CCV & peak CCV)

Monitoring your titles' overall average and peak CCV will help you identify any spikes in influencer activity. With Lurkit’s game insights, you can easily set up and save monitoring for any titles you are interested in.

All of these metrics need to be monitored from multiple perspectives on a weekly basis:

• Macro-perspective - how is my game performing in viewership?
• Micro-perspective - who is creating content about my game?

The most common mistakes and how to avoid them

1. Lack of time to monitor and engage

Understandably, this is a very reasonable conclusion to make based on working with manual monitoring and prospecting. However, with a streamlined funnel and a data-driven approach, you can guarantee that you reach out to and engage with the best prospects in your community. This ensures that the time spent engaging with your organic influencers is creating value.

2. Focusing on the wrong KPIs and misaligned expectations

Measuring the efficiency of your organic influencer marketing can be compared to evaluating SEO. Often, marketers tend to look at short-term sales and put far too much emphasis on the follower count of influencers picking up their titles. By focusing on the appropriate KPIs, you will build a team of genuine ambassadors ready to promote your titles and updates.

3. Missed opportunities

“I actually had no idea that this influencer streamed our title“ is something we sadly hear far too often when chatting with marketers. Influencers generating tons of traction and awareness for your titles are easily missed due to streaming in a different time zone or on the weekends. By having a weekly routine (or even daily, if you want to strike while the iron is hot!) of monitoring your titles, you will make sure to spot any activity by influencers you should be engaging with.

In summary, having a data-driven approach will be an efficient way to save time and increase results if you want to scale your influencer activities. Measuring your efforts will provide you with the insights to create a solid organic influencer presence that will increase brand awareness and sales for your titles.